


To Know, At Least, He Was Loved

by armymenlegos



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Brothers, Canonical Character Death, Light Wincest, Season 9, Weecest, Wincest - Freeform, light weecest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-21
Updated: 2014-05-21
Packaged: 2018-01-26 00:56:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1668809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/armymenlegos/pseuds/armymenlegos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Timestamps in the Epic Love Story of Sam and Dean</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Know, At Least, He Was Loved

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fic about the Epic Love Story of Sam and Dean. There is love, but no sex - but that doesn't mean it didn't happen, it just isn't what this story is about.

Sam can’t remember a time when he and Dean didn’t share a bed. It just was always that way, the consequence of travelling with three people, someone sleeps in a chair or you share. What Sam didn’t know was John was perfectly willing to share, had offered to take Sammy off Dean’s hands for a night so Dean could enjoy the bed to himself for once. Hoping Dean would accept the small comfort when no other could be tendered. Sam never knew that Dean always refused the offer.  
He should have guessed though, and looking back it was obvious by the way Dean engulfed Sam the minute the lights were out, never before. Sam never failed to wake when Dean untangled himself just before dawn – sometimes to slip out to the bathroom, sometimes just because. Sam never woke up in Dean’s arms and it was an ache that ran deeper and sharper than the many others that clouded his life.

  
Dean was equal parts ashamed and accepting of his need to be close to Sam at night. Protecting Sam was his job, what he was destined for, what he lived for; it made him proud to comfort Sam. Dean’s shame was the fact that he needed Sam, needed their intimacy far more than Sam ever could. Dean felt guilt that while he was getting Sammy, Sammy only got him. Dean felt like a shadow, an insubstantial thing that disappointed, weakened and drained the energy from those that shone so bright, shone like Sammy did.

  
It was easy to forget the longing during the day; Sam was whiny and bitched about everything. He had smelly hair, constantly had dirt under his fingernails, sticky hands and his feet stank, he was generally an annoying little brother that Dean would die for at any second. But at night, stinking of sweaty boy or fresh and pink from the shower Sam was the thing Dean could not get enough of. Burying his nose into Sam’s neck, pressing soft kisses to his sweaty temple as he slipped into sleep in damp, anonymous hotel rooms; that is where Dean’s heart lived.

  
Dean accepted that this place, in bed with Sam wrapped around him or him wrapped around Sam; was the only place Dean was ever happy. The cheap covers were all that was needed to insulate them from miles of road and the constant misery and heartbreak of those they helped. This was the place Dean counted on when he couldn’t stand to live in own skin, his own failure, one minute longer. This was the place he kept his apple pie life, curled up with Sam.

  
2005  
Sam was unaware that he was the only one of their broken trio of father and sons that had the fortune to know he was loved. It wasn’t his fault, how could he realize how much sadness crushed their father? How much isolation and loneliness pressed down upon his brother? How could a small boy, so cherished, be expected to realize that not everyone had the same luxury?

  
When Sam decided he was going to college it came as a genuine shock when his father and brother reacted so violently. He couldn’t believe how selfish they were, that they would deny him a chance at happiness. Dean’s betrayal especially hurt, he thought Dean understood. John was often an enigma, and honestly was angry more often than not, but Dean, Dean was supposed to understand.

  
But Sam knew what he wanted, he wanted out. Sam wanted to get away from what he saw in fellow patrons as he peered up through his bangs at restaurants, trying to disappear as John and Dean emptied their pockets frantically searching for enough money to pay the bill. He wanted to belong to a place, he wanted friends that didn’t smother and scold and boss him like his brother did. He wanted to be around people who didn’t drink themselves to sleep at night and disappear with no warning like his father. Sam wanted to shed his broken family and be normal.

  
What Sam did not count on was how empty his triumph would be. Sam could abide, it was one of the first things you learned on the road. Boredom, loneliness and empty hours were constant companions when you lived on the fringe of society, slipping unnoticed from one seedy part of town to another. Sam realized belatedly that he carried a pall about him, something had attached itself to him that he couldn’t shake. He went to classes, he went to parties and even found a partner in Jess. But late at night, awake and aching for a warmth that was no longer there, for the arms of his brother holding him and making the dark come alive, in such contrast to the washed out days. Sam cried often, turning to touch the sheets that never once held the cocky, brave boy who comprised his whole world. Sam sank into a fugue that he had never felt before, Sam felt incomplete, less than and he hated every minute of it.

  
He could have called Dean, he tried to make himself do it, but the opportunity didn’t come up, or at least that is what Sam told himself. He felt adrift and although his resolve melted every time he woke up and found himself without Dean, he learned to accept the dull buzz of loneliness as part of him.

  
When Dean had Sam pinned to the floor underneath him, smiling down and teasing his brother with a mocking “easy tiger”, his world seemed filled with color again. Truth was, he could have looked for (and probably found) John himself, but the first thought in his mind when John failed to return was not about his father, it was about Sam.

  
Dean never told anyone, but he went to visit Sam, at least twice a year for the last four years. Dean never revealed his visits to anyone – excusing himself to follow a hunt or to blow off steam. His father was too preoccupied to care, and Bobby never felt it was his place to ask.

  
Dean never took the Impala, he didn’t dare. Not for the obvious reason that Sam would spot it in a second, but that Dean couldn’t bear all those miles alone, in the only permanent place he had shared with his brother, couldn’t stand the ghosts that would travel with him. Not the real kind, he didn’t mind those, but the memories of the touches, the memories of the only tenderness he ever allowed himself. He would never be able to leave again if he spared a moment to let the longing wash over him, he just needed to see. He needed a visceral reminder that Sam was still out there, that his home, his peace and his comfort still carried on, even if he couldn’t have it.

  
Dean would sit in his stolen car and wonder how he was still breathing. Seeing Sam laugh, carry groceries and walk with his arm around a pretty blonde made the center of his chest burn with loss, he never cried, he just endured his vigil like a penance for not being enough, and drank himself to sleep.

2007  
When Sam finally heard the hounds his stomach dropped, he had never had fear and loss burn through his body like it did at that moment. Not even when John died. The next instant he was holding Dean in his arms, his body shredded and life draining from his bright green eyes. The world went silent as Dean spoke his last words to Sam “Remember…..”

  
Sam had learned many things in the years since he left Stanford to travel with Dean. He matured enough to realize how lucky he was but with that knowledge he gained a horrible burden too. Sam grew up enough that he couldn’t forget, could never forget how much Dean loved him, what Dean was willing to do to keep him safe. It rotted Sam from the inside out and filled the empty space with rage and guilt over his impotence.

  
Sam rampaged and raged and offered himself to any and all comers, he wanted, for once, to be the one to save Dean, to save his brother. It was yet another time Sam had failed, had failed Dean. Dean’s salvation was stolen by another, one with holy fire and a legion of angels. Sam closed that part of himself off, building up another wall to insulate himself from the pain of failing Dean.

2009  
Sam visited Dean, he watched in silence from across the street as Dean built a new life. He thought that maybe it should bother him that he could no longer tell if Dean was happy or not. Dean’s face revealed nothing of the man to Sam, he knew he should know Dean, and even more importantly he should care. Sam was a changed man though, he had no use for the question mark he found when he looked into Dean’s face, so Sam stopped coming.

  
Lisa knew Dean was empty, she knew he was like a cicada husk; the ones the Ben would find after the bugs shed them. They would stick them on their shirts and the husk would cling there - just a thin memory of the living thing. But Lisa knew that Dean would cling for as long as she allowed, she didn’t mind half of a man; she would take what Dean Winchester would give for as long as he would give it. She knew he didn’t love her, not really, Dean had lost the only person he ever loved and it destroyed him. Dean broke her heart, not by not loving her, she had come to terms with that, but by living on when he really wanted to die.

2012  
It happens so fast, he’s annoyed, expects more time. Dean was just, gone. Cas too. One minute of actual joy, as twisted as it was, that they had succeeded, that they fixed this, and the next minute Sam is standing alone in a room that would resemble an abattoir if all the black ichor was red.

  
Sam was alone for the first time in his life; the list of people he knew wouldn’t even take one hand to count. Bobby, Dean, Cas, Dad, Ellen, Rufus, Jo… he feels sick running through the list of people he could turn to, could run to. Sam, for the first time ever is completely and utterly lost. Sam does the only thing he can do, he runs.

  
2013  
Dean can’t believe what he is hearing, can’t believe that Sam had stuffed all this down inside like a poison. Awareness dawns on Dean, Sam knew that the trials would kill him, he just didn’t care. Dean is thrown into a panic, he has to fix this, he has to make Sam understand. All at once Dean is talking to Sam, as if coaxing a frightened cat off a ledge, while inside he screams to himself 'how can he not know! How and he not understand that he is my world, that I never wanted him to hurt, that I fussed and blustered because I hurt so much, but I love him with my whole soul?'

  
2014  
It has been years since the brothers shared a bed, a lifetime. Sam would burrow into Dean and just absorb, absorb love and warmth and worship and sleep knowing he was cherished. It’s been so long since Sam felt that, remembered that. At the time he assumed the feeling would never leave. It breaks his heart now that he realizes he can’t remember when it left; he never noticed when it slipped away.

  
The bunker is dark, Sam cannot abide the light. He cannot bear to see his brother’s skin turn gray, his lips tinted cyan. Sam brought Dean back home, and laid him on his bed, he needed time. Time to think, to fix this, he has nothing left. Sam stares at Dean, or where Dean should be, he can’t see enough in the dark. His face is wet, he doesn’t even realize he is still weeping as he slips into bed and pulls his brother close. It is a mockery of the memory of years ago, now only sorrow and cold seeps into Sam. There is nothing left of Dean now, he has nothing left to give.


End file.
